NIC types are being interchanged. Please help!

[NiteFlite76]

When I create a virtual machine (guest OS: Linux 64 bit), I create two NICs.

Network Adapter 1 = as vmxnet3 and

Network Adapter 2 = e1000

I have these physically mapped to eth0 and eth1 (using port groups)

So to summarize I have..

Network Adapter 1 = type vmxnet3 ---> mapped to physical eth0

Network Adapter 2 = type e1000    ---> mapped to physical eth1

I then install vmWare tools to get the vmxnet3 driver.

Now when I see what drivers are loaded onto the NICs..

#> sbin/ethtool -i eth0

driver: e1000                  --------------->> This should actually be vmxnet3

#> sbin/ethtool -i eth1

driver: vmxnet3                  --------------->> This should actually be e1000.

What am I missing? Any insights?

Thanks!

[dquintana]

Hello Nite,

Just for know, which os linux are you using for the vmxnet 3 vmnic?

check here these are the supported

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100180...

• VMXNET 3 — The VMXNET 3 adapter is the next generation of a paravirtualized NIC  designed for performance, and is not related to VMXNET or VMXNET 2. It  offers all the features available in VMXNET 2, and adds several new  features like multiqueue support (also known as Receive Side Scaling in  Windows), IPv6 offloads, and MSI/MSI-X interrupt delivery.
  
  VMXNET 3 is supported only for virtual machines version 7 and later, with a limited set of guest operating systems:
  
  • 32 and 64bit versions of Microsoft Windows XP, 2003, 2003 R2, 2008,and 2008 R2.
  • 32 and 64bit versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 and later
  • 32 and 64bit versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and later
  • 32 and 64bit versions of Asianux 3 and later
  • 32 and 64bit versions of Debian 4
  • 32 and 64bit versions of Ubuntu 7.04 and later
  • 32 and 64bit versions of Sun Solaris 10 U4 and later

Diego Quintana

[NiteFlite76]

Hi dquintana,

I'm using Centos -64 bit which is basically equivalent to Red-Hat -64 bit.

It does recognize and load the vmxnet3 driver if both my virtual adapters are of type vmxnet3. However if one of them is of type e1000 then by default it loads e1000 to Network Adapter 1 even if this is of type vmxnet3.

[bulletprooffool]

Just because you have created the NICs as NIC1 and NIC2, does not mean that the OS identifies the NICs in the same order.

To verify that they are in fact correct, simply remove one of the NICs from the VM and see if the correct one disappears from the host (e.g. Remove your E1000 Nic and check if the E1000 disappears from the VM?)

That said, why are you using 2 different NIC types?

[NiteFlite76]

Yes I agree with you about the NIC order.

Unfortunately I don't have the luxury or removing the NIC from this host. I got around the problem by making both the adapters of type vmxnet3.

I was experimenting on performance differences between e1000 and vmxnet3 on the same host by making each adapter of a different type.

[vcpguy]

Please, refer to this article - http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/1478-Whats-faster-E1000-or-VMXNET3-lets-see-what-PassMarks-Perform...